


The Things We are Given and the Things We Know

by Ash_Cassidy97



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BAMF Hermione Granger, Multi, Squibs, squib Hermione Granger
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2018-09-25
Packaged: 2019-07-17 08:29:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16091867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash_Cassidy97/pseuds/Ash_Cassidy97
Summary: What if Hermione, who loves magic, was born without magic.AKA how Hermione doesn't need magic to kick ass and take names.AKA that time Severus Snape definitely was terrified of Hermione, along with most of the wizarding world.





	The Things We are Given and the Things We Know

She writes Albus Wulfric Brian Dumbledore when she turns 10 and a half. Her parents, well used to her rants about wizarding community and their own, give her paper, a dictionary, and a sharp tongue. She sits in her attic, listening to the stereo turned to a wizard radio, drafting letters in her most careful print.

 

She recites the 12 uses of dragon’s blood, the stars, ancient runes, and Newt Scamander in no particular order.

 

Hermione Granger is a witch without magic flowing out from her.

 

Albus, seeming to possess some semblance of logic, writes her back politely enough, but declining her anyway.

 

And Hermione Granger snaps.

 

She, possessing all of the power of a muggle, castes ancient runes, throws them into a letter and sends it off in reply.

 

Hermione Granger gets her letter to Hogwarts on her 11th birthday, along with a course list, book list, general materials, and a letter concerning her non-magical enrollment into a magical school.

 

She’s snappy on the train, spouting off facts about a boy she doesn’t know, insults the redhead boy. Hermione is a little too fed up for how this world keeps trying to shut her out, even as she presses in.

 

She whispers facts about wolfsbane under her breath on the way to the stool. She’s gotten this far, she thinks, why not a little further. Just a little further.

 

“Gryffindor!” The hat shouts before it fully drops over her ears.

 

It is bravery to keep striving to force close-minded people to accept the new, the different, the disenfranchised.

 

“No wonder she doesn’t have any friends,” Ron snaps. She pushes past him, crying and angry about it. The Fat Lady won’t open up for her. The stairs have more trick steps for her. Some of the ghosts ignore her. She sat in the back of the Charms classroom with an open textbook, writing an essay on levitation charms, while people mispronounce words that will never work for her.

 

She doesn’t need magic to save them from the troll. “Swish and flick,” she barks at Ron. “Swish and flick.”

 

She gains two friends for it.

 

“You should study more,” she snaps at them both year in and year out. Harry’s good at nodding along to it. He knows she’s bitter that they have magic at their fingers and can’t be bothered some days. Ron’s gotten good at pressing books into her hands about squib ( _don’t use that word!_ **Well, what word should I use?** ) magic.

 

“Are you a witch or not!?” Ron roars at her. He has five older brothers. He has Ginny. He grew up in a magic house where the teapots float toward you, where sweaters knit themselves, where everything from dustpans to cars are beaming in magic. Hermione had the same. He’s always seen it in that fashion.

 

She pulls out a lighter, haven kept it after the whole lighting a  _ professor, Harry, a professor _ , on fire. She likes to be prepared.

 

Hermione had sat at the trap door, glaring at the two boys, daring them to tell her that she wasn’t good enough, strong enough, brave enough, clever enough to jump with them. They, wisely, kept their silences. Ron grew up among magic. Harry has had more than enough of doors slammed in his face to know that he will not slam another to Hermione.

 

She has a pocket full of runes, dung bombs and a careful disregard for the rules.

 

She’s gotten this far. Why not a little further. Just a little further.

 

Harry still goes through the fire alone. She solved the riddle. She used a broom. She does not need to face the monster to be a witch.

 

She pours over books the Second Year. McGonagall presses transfiguration notes into her hands and essays over premade spells get written into her journals. Snape gives her access to his potions lab that year. He remembers being an outcast, laughing at Petunia. He bitterly regrets the actions of a  _ child _ . She does not have hero worship for Lockheart after he tries to throw her out of the classroom for her birth. She punches and hits the pixies back in their cages.

 

“Squib!” Draco Malfoy will roar at her across the quidditch field. “I bet your mother fucked a-”

 

Ron hits him in the face. Hard. Cracks his nose. Ron smiles through the three weeks of detention he gets. Hermione doesn’t yell at him that she can defend herself, well, not  _ too _ much anyway.

 

Hermione tries to not yell at Hagrid for keeping a  _ dragon _ in a  _ wooden house _ too much. She knows enough about grabbing hold of the things that work for her, nevermind the consequences.

 

Harry presses plants into her journals and tells her about Native American magic, about weather patterns and tribal chanting. He tells her about the Scamander-Kowalski School of Magics. She lays still on the hospital bed like a statue. Ron brings chocolates and a few obscure books he found on Gifted ( _ I like the word “Gifted”, Ronald _ ) Magics. He tells her about Draco, about how Snape’s getting grumpier with each passing day because none of them brew as well as her, about how Dippet misses her questions and frowns at Harry and Ron in the hall.

 

They find the note. They defeat a giant snake. Hermione saved herself though.

 

Third year rolls around. She still gets a cat. She still yells at Harry and Ron over a broomstick. She  _ knows _ how brooms can be enchanted, how many things can go wrong. She turned in an essay to Flitwick last year about the history of broom tampering and subsequent improvements. She learns how to chant with runes because “Ms. Granger, runes are created and used by anybody who designs to learn how”.

 

Fred and George Weasley find her after she punches a Ravenclaw 7th year for shouting insults at her and a pack of firsties. They slip her protection runes and tricks that get her through that year.

 

Children can be kind. Throw a thousand of them into a stone castle with magic and well . . . Hermione has always been a fighter.

 

“Why did you come here?” George asks. He waves a hand at her steadily growing angry expression. “Not what I meant. Why did you come to a place that won’t like you?”

 

“I am a witch. I deserve an education. Just because magic does not come easily to me doesn’t mean I don’t deserve it.”

 

She carries a tin of treats for Mrs. Norris around in her bag now. She adds Filch to her list of people to keep in contact with. She goes to his office on warm saturday afternoons and Hagrid’s on chilly sunday mornings. It’s comforting to know that other people are living in this world, living without magic in a magical place.

 

Hermione curses the fact that the skwerts are part of her coursework for eight solid months and does her best to not say an ill word about them to Hagrid, nevermind her various burns.

 

She writes Newt and Jacob every week that year. They write back. Newt writes about creatures and gives decent advice about taming beasts and plants. Jacob tells her about his fifty plus years of being a non magical person living in a magical world. He sends her baked goods and friendly letters about day to day life. And she forces herself to believe it, to believe that the world is kinder than school teaches her.

 

She doesn’t say a thing about Remus Lupin being a werewolf. She knows enough about strays and kind men.

 

“I’ve known for months,” she snaps, as friends are revealed to be traitors. She helped Severus make the potion for Merlin’s sake, helped to charm the runes into liquid so that he would have less pain.

 

Hermione finds Severus after the last feast. “Why? Why would you do that?”

 

“He’s dangerous.”

 

“Not more than me.”

 

“You’re not-”

 

“What, Severus? Different? A danger to the status quo? Lupin is as much a person as you.” She leaves him there, stalking out of the lab.

 

Hermione tutors Harry and Ron through spells that will never work for her in fourth year. She does the same in fifth. Luna sits next to her on rainy Tuesdays and tells her about things nobody else believes in, in singing fishermen and women who weave with magic in southern France.

 

Umbridge doesn’t go after Harry here. She has a better victim. Squibs mustn’t speak in class. Squibs mustn’t take exams. Squibs are not worthy to learn magic.  Squibs mustn’t be at Hogwarts. Luna sits next to her on those days, talking about disappearing sneakers and things taken and given back.

 

She gets “Squibs are not magic” written into the back of her hand.

 

It doesn’t take as much convincing for Harry to teach others, to make himself into a target. She hires Skeeter to tell the truth about Harry, especially after the year before when Skeeter had written about the poor little squib’s crush on the Chosen One. Merlin.

 

She fights for the house elfs for a month before Harry kindly takes her to the kitchen. It’s perhaps the first time Hermione learns that not everything needs to be a fight.

 

“How can they like it?” she asks, but she doesn’t start knitting wonky hats.

“Not everybody wants to fight,” Ron tells her.

“I’m-I’m fighting to  _ learn _ , to be  _ here _ .”

 

They all go to the ministry. Hermione stares Ron down. Harry doesn’t even try. He’s had enough of slamming doors in his face. She has a bag of tricks and a carefully developed disregard for the rules. Just a little further.

 

They step into the room with the veil. Hermione blocks the others from walking to it. She knows the runes curses around the woven fabric. She knows that no good comes from this room. “Back,” she whispers, “Back.”

 

Sixth year roles around. They lose so many people that night in the tower. Hermione leaves the other two to go help Pomprey with the wounded. Charlie’s sitting next to an unconscious Bill.

 

“Will he be okay?” Charlie asks. He looks exhausted, eyes only on his brother. The other Weasley’s had been sheperaded off by Molly, who was passed out on a nearby bed.

 

Hermione nods, tracing runes into his bandages. “He’ll live. What happens after is up to him.” She more than most knows what this world does to different, to strange.

 

Hermione had written Remus for the past three years. She would write him to give him warning. Voldemort is back. Now. Truly. And Severus turned. For everybody else, the war had finally come. For the three, it had been raging since their first year at Hogwarts.

 

She coaxes Harry and Ron into warding their camp in their run from Voldemort, towards Voldemort. She teaches them about edible plants, how to light a fire without matches or wands. She has a purse that Bill charmed for her that carries all the things she needs. Her hands have gripped so many things, learned to heal, to fight.

 

“What do you have to offer,  _ Squib _ ?” Bellatrix Lestrange hisses at her as she cuts the word into Hermione’s arm. She tries not to scream. She tries to-just a little further, she promises herself, shaking on that floor.

 

She frees the dragon in the bank. She sees the goblins with their noisemakers and hatred for a creature that’s not magical enough for them and - she frees the dragon and doesn’t tell herself it was just an escape plan. They go to Hogwarts, to their first battleground.

 

Hermione knows where the chamber lies, where the Room of Requirement is, how many steps are in each staircase, can navigate it blind. She built herself into this place, fought every day to walk these steps.  _ She will not let Voldemort take it from her, not while she breathes. _

 

Harry lives and dies and lives again. The war is over. The war is, what most will say, won. But they are not twenty years old yet, and it is not over.

 

She buys a flat when the war’s over. It’s close enough to the ministry for her to firecall in. It’s in southern France, in a tiny town. There are fishermen who sing their fish into their nets. There are weavers who can make the shuttle skiter across without touching it. The town has a worn in feel to it.

 

It’s not magical. The whole place is full of Gifted folk, people who aren’t wizards or witches by the common use of the word, but it’s more than enough to be going on with. She hadn’t wanted to live in London, pressed up against people who don’t particularly like her or her kind. She’s had more than enough of that, and honestly, she’ll wait a few years until all the policies are rewritten by her before forcing the matter.

 

The war had taken some of her bitterness away.

 

She doesn’t have to go a little further, doesn’t have to push her way past because she’s not worthy. Hermione Granger fought death eaters, fought policy makers, and world crackers. She is more than enough for this life.

 

Ron smiles at her as he haggles price with the farmers. Newt, Mr. Filch (she still calls him that after all these years), and Hagrid visit when they can. Harry has one of the guestrooms. Severus (it’s been five years, Ms. Granger, call me by my given name for all the-) stays a fair amount in the other. The flat doesn’t have floating teapots or self-knitting sweaters, but it’s home. It’s a worn in home that they had fought for.

 

Harry shows up on her doorstep with Draco Malfoy. He’s wearing jeans and a shy look about him. She lets them in. Harry has earned her trust. Ron has his wand in his hand and a tighter look about him, but Ron’s always been protective of her since Hermione will rush in where wizards fear to tread.

 

“I heard you were setting up a school for Gifted kids,” Draco says, taking the cup of tea she pours him. “I want to donate half of the Malfoy fortune to it.”

 

Ron freezes in complete shock. Hermione and Harry sip at their tea. “I think that would be a good start,” Hermione says.

 

He nods.

 

Two years from then, Hermione will give a speech in that village. “Welcome to the School of Gifted Magics. Here you will learn about magic, your own and others.” She lights the candles with a runic chant and steady hands that have scars and dishonest words on them. “Here, you are welcome and accepted for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> watched magicians and got inspired. sidetone: that is one dark TV show.


End file.
